Adapting to climate change and tackling social justice – a local authority's perspective

The global effects of climate change are well publicised. Ultimately, it is deprived areas that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which makes it a local issue for Local Authorities to address at a local level. My role as Leader is to ensure that we address this imbalance and deliver resilient services for the whole community of Hampshire.

Last year, we spent over £450 million on our adult and children services. This demonstrates the significant proportion of our services that involves vulnerable groups. In times of budget cuts, we need to be ensuring that we invest in projects that deliver multiple outcomes in order to benefit as many of our services as possible.

Hampshire County Council is working on a climate change adaptation action plan which has interactions with social justice in nearly all of its measures. Promoting adaptation and resilience to residents has much to do with promoting social justice. A resilient community will be better placed to cope with extreme weather events. Enabling areas to become resilient relies on close collaboration between local authorities and communities to ensure an equitable response is delivered.

The plan embeds adaptation into the Council's core services, for example, we are already adapting schools, care homes and public buildings to manage high temperatures as the elderly and vulnerable are more likely to suffer with heat related health impacts. It is our responsibility to embed social justice principles into everything we do and we are well on our way to achieving this.

The recently launched area based insulation scheme, Insulate Hampshire, offers heavily subsidised or free insulation for our community. The project will save energy, money and cut carbon emissions. But Insulate Hampshire is about more than just financial savings. Our social workers see the effects of fuel poverty everyday, by helping people take up the scheme we can make a big difference to their lives. As well as creating and publicising a service open to all, we have been proactive in removing barriers and engaging with hard to reach groups, focusing on areas of deprivation and those most vulnerable.

In my opinion, tackling social injustice and climate change complement each other. It is logical to address both issues in unison.